When I first heard the English name for the slice-of-life workplace series Working!!, I thought it a rather odd title: Wagnaria!! makes me think of Richard Wagner. Or Robert Wagner. Or Wag the Dog. As it turns out, Wagnaria is the name of the restaurant in the show, so given that the name was likely changed to avoid conflicting with the 1997 Fred Savage sitcom, it seemed like the best choice for a replacement name.
 In a way, the title change also makes sense due to the show's content. Despite being called Working!! and nearly every episode taking place at the restaurant, the show really isn't about actual work. Oh sure, there are some scenes where the crew is shown serving customers, baking or cooking, and running the cash register, but the heart of Wagnaria!! is the relationships between the various employees of the restaurant. But don't let me mislead you with the "relationships" bit. Wagnaria!! is a comedy, and often a funny one.
One reason the comedy works is that the characters aren't run-of-the-mill. The main character, Sota Takanashi, despite having all the potential trappings of a generic male lead, sets himself apart by having a fascination with the cute and small (though he insists it's nonsexual in nature), which makes his relationship with co-worker Poplar Taneshima an amusing one: Poplar is very short and vocally high-pitched for her age (17) but is actually older than Sota. So she's always having to remind people that she's his senior, despite her looks. Then there's Yachiyo Todoroki, the head waitress who is the smiling, "eyes perpetually closed" sweet type—except for the fact that she always carries around a katana, which causes the restaurant patrons to get nervous around her. The manager, Kyoko Shirafuji, is about the least likely candidate to run a business: eating the kitchen food constantly (yet still maintaining that trim figure!), not wanting to do any work, and not motivating the team, often leaving some management duties to her employees. Oh yes, and having gang ties which come in handy for deadbeats who refuse to pay the tabs. Two cooks, Jun Sato and Hiroomi Soma, are a mixture of seemingly aloof for the former and cheery on the outside but blackmailing on the inside for the latter. The oft-absent district manager, Hyogo Otoo, isn't quite normal, either; he's missing his wife (she wasn't kidnapped; she just has a horrible sense of direction and can't seem to find her way home, which is a pretty funny mental image) and randomly brought a mischievous, third person-speaking girl named Aoi Yamada off the streets to work for the restaurant. Even a minor character named Maya Matsumoto is so obsessed with being "normal" that she unintentionally comes across as abnormal.
 But arguably the biggest focus of the show is an orange-haired girl named Mahiru Inami. She would be the typical timid girl, except she has a bit of a violent streak to match her hair. It's revealed very quickly that she's androphobic, and defensively punches guys whenever they get near. Realistically, this would be a huge problem for someone in a position where they had to interact with male customers on a daily basis (and indeed, in the real world, she would've been fired ages ago for obvious reasons), but in the realm of fantasy comedy, it's treated as a quirky personality trait that is worked around by the restaurant instead of vice versa. But again, it's all in the execution. I recently criticized Girls Bravo because one of the female characters physically assaulted one of the male characters and got away with it, when there's no way the same would be true if the sexes were reversed, thanks to double standards. Here, Inami is genuinely sorry every time she punches a guy (often it's Takanashi), since she actually does want to be in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex and is a sweet person otherwise. But she had a twisted upbringing where she was repeatedly brainwashed into believing that all men are evil. So while it doesn't excuse her behavior, at least there's an underlying cause for it and she does her best to squelch the punching throughout the series, with Takanashi's help.
As I said before, Wagnaria!! succeeds in its comedy. In a refreshing change from many recent anime comedies that I've watched, the humor comes not from trying to be as crazy or vulgar as possible, or by cramming in obscure textual references that only Japan would get (coughSHAFTcough). Instead, it relies on wordplay, on unexpected detours in dialog exchanges, and on the varied personalities of the characters bouncing off each other. There are even a few hopeful romantic relationships amidst the kitchen staff, most all of them unrequited on one end, leading to more comedy (this isn't a melodrama, so the romance is played more for laughs). Aside from the gradually developing Inami/Takanashi relationship, each episode is its own standalone entry, making it easy to re-watch in small chunks. Being based on a 4koma comic strip (that is, four panels), it has many vignettes per episode, sort of like Azumanga Daioh, but they feel a bit more tied into the overall plot of the episode, which is an improvement over the rather random feel of that show (as much as I enjoy it).
 Speaking of plots, truthfully, there are a couple we've seen before. One has Takanashi being convinced to crossdress as a girl to fool Inami's visiting father. And another has the restaurant crew visiting a hot springs resort when a broken water main on the premises has to be fixed. But within these generic premises are still some fun moments, so I could forgive them. There was really only one episode of the thirteen that I didn't care for, featuring Takanashi dealing with his four sisters at home. His sisters are fairly underdeveloped characters, mostly made up of one-note quirks (one sister's a perpetual flirty drunk, another's a hikikomori, etc.), so that episode quickly grew tiresome.
Wagnaria!! is the first title I've viewed from NIS America, and it's an impressive debut for me. The picture quality on the 2-disc set looks great throughout, and the English credits take the approach of saving them for the end of a disc, as opposed to filling the already text-filled intros and outtros with even more text, or taking the Japanese kanji out entirely.
While it's unfortunately lacking an English dub, the subtitles are very readable and written well so that the text isn't worded awkwardly. I only spotted a couple of minor grammar mistakes, but nothing too serious. One small personal nitpick, though: On my DVD player, the default settings are Japanese language without subtitles. And since the disc starts off automatically playing the episodes instead of going to a menu first, that means if you want subtitles (and unless you're fluent in Japanese, I'm sure that would be the case), you have to either be quick on the remote without missing anything, or bring up the menu and change them there. Again, not a huge deal, but slightly irksome.
 As for the special features, they're limited on the discs themselves to clean openings and endings. However, the set comes with a lovely hardbound 30-some page supplement full of character profiles, model sheets, background stills, official art, a cute relationship chart, and even a few pages of the Working!! 4koma. The humor in the comic strip is very dry (so much so that half the strips barely even contain punchlines in the traditional sense), but it is still a welcome addition. Overall, this book makes up for the lack of material on the discs. The downside to the book? Its inclusion makes the DVD set very tall, so much so that it doesn't fit neatly on my shelf. I had to put it elsewhere. But again, that's a nitpick.
Wagnaria!! is a fun but woefully short-lived ride. It left me wanting more. While it arguably isn't about work and is more about relationships with your peers at work, the relationships are well-developed and the mostly dialog-based humor often works because it's basing the jokes off the characters' personalities. Wagnaria!! comes recommended.
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